Page 9 of Them

When it was full, the victorious veteran coiled its tail around what remained of its opponent and began to tow it down the road. Clink-clink-gash, clink-clink-gash. Clink-clink-gash. To the winner went the spoils…

Somewhere in the woods, a twig snapped. The man jumped, torn from his memories. He sat silent for a moment. One hand wrapped around the grip of his pistol. A crow cawed. A cricket chirped. An unseen bat chittered. No monsters. All was as it should be.

It was time to go.

The bats sang him off, though he couldn’t see them amid the total gray. Maybe they were wishing him luck, not so ignorant of the new world after all. Or they were happy, their shrill songs composed of bat lyrics that translated to You will die and we don’t care.

The man set off in careful steps north, toward the woods and the lull of the creek. Even the stars were dim tonight. His eyes turned back to the house, then to the west. There was elevation that way. Hills and mountains that would slow him, but was that such a bad thing? He was a man with no time to lose because he had no time to make. The only way to lose was to die.

Yet he turned northward anyway.

As he approached the tree line, the bats spoke louder, and the man thought it might be his own dirge, his own death song that made him believe that, yes, the bats weren’t so ignorant after all. They rejoiced in the extinction of man. Fawned over the millions of now-vacant attics. There was only one species of losers in the extinction of humanity; the bats were among the legions of victors. Goodbye! they cried. We’ll be taking this farmhouse, thank you kindly! Don’t come again! Leave the back door open and we’ll let ourselves in!

The man, suddenly anxious to leave the bat nights behind, stepped into the forest.

Awaiting him beneath the cover of trees was an insatiable nothing. He’d long stopped using a flashlight outdoors—the Scorpions rose with first light so regularly that he worried they might mistake his beam for the sun—but soon began to reconsider what posed the most imminent danger. Trunks seemed to manifest themselves mere feet ahead. After taking a blunt whack to the face from a near-invisible branch, he raised his arms and groped his way forward. His eyes grasped for light that was not there. The night mutated everything into vague blobs of merging black.

Everything but the creek. It grew louder. It echoed like a whitewater river. Had he miscalculated? Could it be that the backwoods crick was rather a roaring torrent, incapable of being crossed?

Slowly, the man slipped the lighter from his pocket. After three clicks, a flame sparked, illuminating a narrow orb around him, tall flickering shadows stretching out of view. The flashlight was in another pocket, fresh batteries inside, but it seemed too great a risk. Too bright a beacon.

His other hand tapped his pockets in hushed assurance, a reminder that he could quickdraw anything he needed if necessary. The essential escape items had been transferred from his pack to his person.

Water’s so loud. His free hand moved to cover his light from that direction. If he had to wade past their sleeping shells, then he would surely die. Feel a steely stinger slither around his ankles just before it dragged him under. The man hoped they would drown him before they gouged and tore, but he doubted it. Nothing was worse than soggy meat.

The sound of water grew closer, swelled around him. Echoes of it reverberated off the dirt and trees, and the man wondered if this was what the bats felt in their nocturnal blindness, if he was dreaming, if at any moment he would blink his eyes and find himself tangled in the slick, sweaty sheets of another strange bed.

That’s the River Styx I hear. I got lost and wound up in hell.

The lighter would have to be turned off in due time, if the water was deep enough for them to nest in. But if he couldn’t see, how would he know? His night vision was solid; the man thought he could run without plastering himself against a tree. If he needed to.

But something else concerned him: The ground was sloping upward. The deeper into the woods he journeyed, the more the earth tilted. The mountains of the west had crept toward him, discontented with the man’s decision to evade them. His steps reverted to staggered tiptoes as the soil shifted beneath him.

A memory came forward—a horror movie he’d seen at the local AMC, the one with Jim from The Office. No one dared speak. Every crinkle of an M&M’s bag seemed deafening in that theater. She was with him that night. She’d asked him to hold Her close.

Wish I had someone to hold me.

His hand moved from tower to tower of rough bark, grasping them for certainty. The trees were beginning to thin on the uneven soil. He must be getting closer, encroaching on the wooded river. Drawing ever nearer to their wicked, submerged, glowing eyes, and Jesus he felt scared.

A sliver of sweat crept from his armpit, down his protruding rib cage, and the man shivered in the humid dark. Shaking with nerves. If he aimed at anything farther than his own skull, he would miss. Yes, if he felt their tails tangle around his ankle tendon, he would do it. Deny them their satisfaction because he was certain that they felt it. It was the pride in their moon-big eyes. Gluttony.

But God, don’t let it happen. Don’t let ’em get me, don’t let ’em spring from summer water and drag me down down down with them. Made it this far. Not ready yet. None of us were. Thought I could go gentle with that good light. Are you a good light? You there? Questions now. Not ready. Won’t go. Not taking my medicine yet. No shoulders high, no mustang pose. Just rage against it.

The man didn’t want the bats to be right and he wasn’t ready to lose and the only thing that kept him from logic-bound thoughts of turning around was the all-swallowing sound of rushing, falling, water that drew him in like a bass lipped on a lure.

It was a waterfall. A towering rock face cascading with spraying sustenance, glistening in the dim light of his frail torch. He took a deep breath, scanned what he could see of the world before him, and let the fire die.

Because there, in the shallow pool at the bottom of the waterfall, the man spied the paltry ripples of moving water. The white currents stood out in the black, but they were masked, incomplete. Overshadowed and eclipsed.

Hovering over the surface of the water, pooled at the bottom of the falls, were the silhouettes of slumbering scythes.

Do you remember the truck, dear reader? And its mustard-yellow storage container? The empty one? No one ever figured it out. We were worried about that. We scoured the online conspiracy forums for any indication that someone was onto something.

But no one ever figured it out.

Do you want to know what really happened?

If you add up the weight of the Volvo truck, its trailer, the empty storage container, gasoline, and everything else found at the scene, it totaled about thirty thousand pounds of high-speed hulk.